Mourning, Melancholia, and Masculinity in Medieval Literature Rebekah Mary Fowler Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected]
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2011 Mourning, Melancholia, and Masculinity in Medieval Literature Rebekah Mary Fowler Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Fowler, Rebekah Mary, "Mourning, Melancholia, and Masculinity in Medieval Literature" (2011). Dissertations. 336. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/336 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MOURNING, MELANCHOLIA, AND MASCULINITY IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE by Rebekah M. Fowler B.S., Illinois State University, 1988 M. A. University of Illinois at Springfield, 2005 Ph.D., Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctorate of Philosophy Department of English in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale May, 2011 DISSERTATION APPROVAL MOURNING, MELANCHOLIA, AND MASCULINITY IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE By Rebekah M. Fowler A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Approved by: Ryan Netzley, Chair Mary Ellen Lamb Dan Wiley Elizabeth Klaver Gerard Delahoussaye Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale January 27, 2011 AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF REBEKAH M. FOWLER, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in English, presented on JANUARY 27, 2011, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: MOURNING, MELANCHOLIA, AND MASCULINITY IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Ryan Netzley This dissertation examines male bereavement in medieval literature, expanding the current understanding of masculinity in the Middle Ages by investigating both the authenticity and affective nature of grief among aristocratic males. My focus is on the pattern of bereavement that surfaces across genres and that has most often been absorbed into studies of lovesickness, madness, the wilderness, or more formalist concerns with genre, form, and literary convention, but has seldom been discussed in its own right. This pattern consists of love, loss, grief madness and/or melancholy, wilderness lament/consolation, and synthesis and application of information gleaned from the grieving process, which is found is diverse texts from the twelfth century romance of Chrétien de Troyes‘ Yvain to the fifteenth century dream vision/consolatio Pearl. A focused study of how bereavement is represented through this pattern gains us a deeper understanding of medieval conceptions of emotional expression and their connections to gender and status. In other words, this project shows how the period imagines gender and status not just as something one recognizes, but also something one feels. The judgments and representations of bereavement in these texts can be explained by closely examining the writings of such religious thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas, who borrow from the neo-Platonic and Aristotelian schools of thought, respectively, and i both of whom address the potential sinfulness and vanity of excessive grief and the dangers for this excess to result in sinful behavior. This latter point is also picked up in medical treatises and encyclopedic works of the Middle Ages, such as those of Avicenna and Isidore of Seville, which are also consulted in this project. The medieval philosophical and medical traditions are blended with contemporary theories of gender, authenticity, and understanding, as well as an acknowledgement of the psychoanalytic contributions of Freud and Lacan. Through these theories, I explore the capacity for the men in these texts to move beyond the social strictures of masculinity in order to more authentically grieve over the loss of their loved ones, which often constitutes a type of lack. However, my purpose is not to view losses as lack, but rather, to see them as a positive impetus to push beyond the limits of social behavior in order to realize textually various outcomes and to suggest the limitations of such socially sanctioned conventions as literary forms, language, rituals, understanding, and consolation to govern the enactment of grief. ii DEDICATION To my brother, Brian Fowler, who has felt deep sorrow and who, through his grief, demonstrated that men can and do feel strongly—and can show it; to my parents, Earl and Delores Fowler, for always encouraging me to follow my heart and for being supportive when my heart has drawn me in unconventional directions; and to my husband, Dallas Kearns, for the sacrifices. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Ryan Netzley for careful and thoughtful reading, honest, thought-provoking, and always useful feedback, and for his willingness to pick up a project already in progress and see to the end. Likewise, thank you to Dr. Elizabeth Klaver and Dr. Gerard Delahoussaye for stepping in late to fill vacated committee spots, but doing so with grace and precision; their suggestions were well-heeded and the next project will benefit from their insights. Dr. Mary Ellen Lamb, as always, served as bastion of support and guidance for which my gratitude seems paltry, and Dr. Dan Wiley‘s knowledge about medieval romance, folklore, and eschatological vision has served as an unparalleled font of information. Thanks, as well, to Dr. Mark Amos for sparking the flame of delight I experience when I read medieval texts and for getting the ball rolling. Finally, thank you to the Department of English at Southern Illinois University for six years of support and guidance. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. …i DEDICATION ............................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................ iii CHAPTERS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 – Love Loss and Loss of Purpose as Sources of Grief in Yvain ...................................................................... 30 CHAPTER 2 – Grief and the Trewe Man in the Breton lai Sir Orfeo .................................................................................................... 81 CHAPTER 3 – Form and Universal Understanding in Chaucer‘s Book of the Duchess .............................................................. 139 CHAPTER 4 – Deferred Consolation and Substitution in Pearl ................................ 192 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………... 244 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 250 VITA ……………………………………………………………………………..….267 v 1 INTRODUCTION: FEELING MASCULINITY Men grieve. They love, they lose their beloveds, they mourn their loss; yet, this does not alter the fact that they are men. My dissertation considers male bereavement in medieval literature as a means of expanding the current understanding of masculinity in the Middle Ages by looking at representations of men as feeling men, not just men who fight and love, that is, not just as men who fall into hegemonic ideals or who are defined solely in terms of sexuality. I examine four male characters from as many texts—Yvain, Sir Orfeo, The Book of the Duchess, and Pearl—who are grieving over a lost beloved, each following a basic pattern, but each, also, utilizing the pattern to express his own unique grief and, therefore, exhibiting authentic emotions. While each man follows the pattern of losing a beloved, suffering some degree of grief madness in a wilderness setting, and returning to relative sanity, the types and expressions of loss each man suffers vary. In fact, each of the men in these texts acts in some way that operates outside of social conventions that suggests that these conventions fall short when it comes to the expression of deep emotions. While social norms presented in the texts suggest that the aristocratic medieval man should remain stoic, refrain from swooning and lamenting publicly, and get over their losses quickly, the characters do not comply. According to their own unique situations and losses, each goes either completely mad, succumbs to prolonged melancholia, or demonstrates his folly by flouting the comfort of consolation; the men swoon, lament, share their stories with other men, and despair of their hopelessness; they make assumptions about the ―privacy‖ afforded by the forest, and they 2 long for their sorrow to end. For some, like Yvain, it does. For others, like Pearl‘s Dreamer, it cannot end until he leaves this corporeal life. Each of these men expresses his grief authentically. He is not just enacting grief; he is feeling it, and through the expression of his pain he is affirming his masculine self. The gestures and words the authors afford their characters make palpable the pain they are feeling, allowing us to see that masculinity involves more than just chivalric prowess and courtly love, more than social identity and external veneer. When these men swoon and exclaim, ―Alas!‖ they enjoin readers to share their pain, not simply to observe it. However,